New York: Various research and survey reports conducted across the US this year have suggested low pay scale, the Covid-19 pandemic, overwork, and irritating attitudes of students are some key reasons that forced teachers to quit their profession, while the US government has so far not been able to come up with a comprehensive plan to address their concerns.
The pandemic and shifting political landscape have left teachers feeling overworked and undervalued.
According to a 2022 Gallup poll, K-12 teachers report the highest burnout rate of all U.S. professions. More than four out of every 10 teachers said they feel burned out “always” or “very often” at work.
The National Center for Education Statistics says 44% of public schools will report teaching vacancies at the start of this year and more than half of those were from resignations with 1000s of teaching vacancies across the country.
According to Money, America’s teachers are fed up. As the Great Resignation continues in full swing, teachers who quit their jobs are particularly likely to feel angry and blame low pay and the pandemic when they leave the classroom behind.
A new survey from job search platform Joblist explores why so many workers are quitting, and one of the big takeaways is that many teachers in the U.S. feel unhappy and underappreciated.
According to the poll, 26% of educators who quit their last job cited low pay or lack of benefits as a reason why they left, compared to 19% of workers in all industries who resigned because of meager pay and benefits.
Joblist also found that while less than 1 in 4 of those who recently quit reported feeling angry with their employers, teachers were particularly full of rage. Some 30% of teachers felt “angry” or “very angry” with their employers when they decided to quit — second only to hospitality workers, 34% of whom reported feelings of anger.
For decades, America’s educators have said they would’ve abandoned the job long ago were it not for their devotion to their students. But after a demanding and demoralizing two years that included Zoom schooling, culture wars, and shootings, those threats have finally become real. A Gallup Poll in February showed that K-12 educators were the most burned-out segment of the US labor force.
Now teachers are walking out by the hundreds of thousands, vowing never to return. A study by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) in March found that 44% of public schools reported teaching vacancies. By LinkedIn’s calculations, the number of teachers who quit in June was almost 41% higher than a year earlier.
About 76% of the 3.5 million US public school teachers were female in the 2017-18 academic year, the latest available NCES data show. As women abandon the field for industries in which pay is higher, stress lower, and creative thinking more valued, education could see a generation-long brain drain.
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